In recent years, networked home appliances (hereinafter simply referred to as “appliances”) have become common, which have the function of communicating with an external server via a communication network such as the Internet or a mobile telephone network. This function is used by, for example, an advertisement distribution system that transmits information such as an advertisement from an external server to such appliances (e.g. Patent Literature 1). An advertisement distribution server in the advertisement distribution system distributes an advertisement to a plurality of appliances simultaneously, according to conditions determined by an advertiser in advance, such as the starting time and the period of distribution, and the destinations of the advertisement.
In this advertisement distribution system, however, it is not considered whether the users of the appliances at the destinations of the advertisement are in the vicinity of their respective appliances at the time of actual distribution of the advertisement. If the users are not in the vicinity of the appliances at the time of distribution of the advertisement and cannot recognize the advertisement, it can hardly be said that the advertisement distribution is effective. In view of this problem, Patent Literature 2 discloses technology of delivering an advertisement to an appliance at the time the user operates the appliance, aiming to achieve more effective distribution of advertisements.